Learning to fight
by mindless-junk-247
Summary: The Alliance have had control over River's broken mind for a while now. During that bar fight in the BDM, she hesitates in shooting Mal. Learning to fight is her motto! So why pause?


**A/N:** So, no. I'm not dead to the world and yes I still have an interest in . Remember that scene in the BDM where River foghts all of those people in that bar Mal and Jayne are trying to make a deal in because of the OATY bar advert? Yeah, I was wondering why River paused when she had that gun pointed at Mal. She's just taken down everyone else in the bar, INCLUDING JAYNE! So what about him?

Anyway, **disclaimer** time, yada yada yada Joss Whedons work blah blah blah, not mine. Enjoy!

* * *

Fighting. Learning.

She's learning to fight their control. Learning to fight their commands.

Trained to delve into other people's mind, she had always thought to try it on herself. It had never worked. She was too broken, too uneven and too wound up to be unscrambled into a coherent straight line.

Secrets that aren't hers to keep tear up her memory, tear up the workings of her mind, offering her no help in keeping it all sectioned off into two parts; her mind, and reality. The two connected, interconnected, she sees this. But they are also separate and this is something that boggles her even more. Can one truly exist without the other? Can one survive independently whilst the other dies?

Questions stir, never answered and always left hanging, waiting for the blanks to be filled in.

Trying to make sense of the voices in her head, the images and the screams. It doesn't work and her walls crumble around her. She's no longer safe, and neither is the crew of _Serenity_. It's only a matter of time until things turn 'ugly' as the Captain would say.

'The Captain' she thinks, taking small steps into the bar. She takes it in, analysing the scene, the people, their attitudes and postures, their clothes and accents. Somehow, all of these different people can exist and survive in the same room with no discrimination or snobbery. Something she wouldn't have seen on Osiris. Something that was lost in her sea of thoughts.

The vid' screen shows a commercial, an octopus and some 'woman', cartoons. Her mouth trembles, her eyes glaze and she realises, that wall she had built around herself, it's fallen. Hard and fast.

The moves come to her freely from memory, as if she used to practice them everyday. Sometimes she knows she did, other times she 's not too sure. All she knows is, is this isn't her. She was the girl training to be on stage performing ballet in front of hundreds of people.

She had never imagined herself being trained to be the girl killing, maiming and hurting hundreds of people without even batting an eye or shedding a drop of sweat. 'Isn't normal' she tells herself, kicking a bottle, hard, at a drunkards head and knocking him out. 'Men and women, bigger and stringer then the bird. A gaggle of geese taken out by the Albatross.'

She pauses, analyses the chaos in the room and finds herself at peace, tranquil. Part of her rages for the fight to carry on, no remorse or grief about what she had done. No shame in the animalistic side that has been unleashed from her soul.

Delving into her mind again, River sees nothing but black nothingness, extending out and wrapping itself around her body, conducting her every move to its commands. 'Not it, theirs', she tells herself, the words lost on her seconds later.

Jayne's arms pinning her down. Wrong. She swings, grabs and twists. He lets go and she swings her arm up. Distracted by the pain she grabs a tray and swings it up into his face, knocking him out cold. Even after his declaration of being a back hand man for her, she still took him out. No care for friend or foe.

No care for the damage she inflicts as she carries on, grabbing a gun and twisting herself around. One target left and he's too far away to reach by foot because of how close he is to a gun himself.

She cocks the hammer, gives the man next to her one last hit and trains the barrel of her newly acquired gun on the targets chest, hovering just over his heart.

River pauses, a flood of realisation washing over her.

But it's a battle. Realisation floods her but the darkness is trying to drown her. She delves into his mind, the Captain's mind and sees what she has done, the carnage she has left behind for Mal to pick up. She sees what he sees, a teenage girl bordering on the edge of adulthood and she's taken out a room of thirty four people in six minutes and twenty seven seconds.

He's scared of her, of what he knows she is capable of. But he's protective because that's her; _a child._ Still. He sees the abnormality in the situation and knows that she shouldn't be in her position now, that if anyone should be it's him, has been him.

She pauses, eyes wide as she stares at the Captain. Her focus shifts back to her own mind and she delves to find what it is that he is seeing.

She delves deep into the shadows of the darkness that plays chicken with the trigger, and she finally sees it. A small part of her, weak and hopeful, pushing its way through the mud and clawing its way up the shadows of her body.

River sees the small light that's begging to be let out, the innocence of what she was. Now she sees what everyone sees. Smart, young, child, light, small, _innocence. _

She's fighting to drag it to the surface. She's learning to stamp out the darkness and burn a path for the innocence. The feel of cool calm collectiveness borders around her hands, slowly and painfully dragging the finger away.

Another presence threatens that balance she's unbalancing. Fighting to keep the imbalance going she's quickly learning to push out other thoughts from her mind.

Fighting. Learning.

Fighting to learn to be herself again. She realises this is who she is and is what she will achieve. Even if it kills her.

A quick slip of the tongue and words control her life again.

For now, she'll sleep.


End file.
